Missing Pieces
by timydamonkey
Summary: Jason is dead. Ethan awakens from a coma. Ethan, Grace and Shaun try to learn to adapt. It doesn't quite work for anybody. First up: Ethan awakens into the new family circumstances.


Missing Pieces: (_by timydamonkey_)

* * *

Author's Note: This is a three part story, taking three separate points of views (one part, one person). First up is Ethan!

This whole story takes place in the gap of time between The Mall and Father and Son. It's mostly linear – I'll explain why I said "mostly" when it happens! This will also probably be the shortest part according to my notes of what I want each section to cover.

I'm not sure how accurate a depiction this is. I struggled a lot with it as I don't really want it unrealistic, but the fact is it's pretty difficult to find the stuff I wanted to out about coma patients… so we'll just have to call it artistic license I think. I came to the conclusion it was probably better to post this than to never post it ever because I was unsure of it. Maybe I'll revise it at some point in the future.

I don't know when the next two parts will be posted. I predict the next part will be hardest to write. Three should be easy enough.

* * *

Part One: Ethan:

Ethan remembered Jason. He remembered plastic swordfights and cheesy one-liners, hugs and football games, two boys cheering him on as his wife huffed in a way that meant she wasn't really angry at all.

He didn't remember why he couldn't move. An invasive noise filtered into his hearing, and he was startled by the silence beyond it. He expected a, "Dad, what's doing that?" or a "Turn it off!" but there was nothing. He could barely hear breathing. Everything was mechanical.

It was dark, or maybe his eyes were closed. Testing the hypothesis, he found it to be correct, but forcing them open required a lot of effort and keeping them open was beyond him. He blinked exhaustedly.

When his eyes were open, he saw white. He tried to open his eyes again, managed to keep them open a fraction longer. It hurt, but if he focused for just that second the ceiling had little cracks, little pinpricks. He wondered if the building was structurally sound, if that's why he was so utterly misplaced. He was an architect; he cared about such things.

He blinked again. His eyes didn't reopen. He was only passively aware of anything going on, he felt as if he barely existed, and then he heard, "Dad!" He forced his eyes open again.

Shaun was leaning over his face invasively. It was more of a thing Jason would do. His sons got along, but Jason was the eldest and this was his role. But he couldn't think about Jason now, because Shaun looked wrong – too big for his skin, and his posture was unlike anything Ethan had ever seen before as if he'd been taken apart and put back together wrongly. And it was then that Ethan realised something was horribly wrong.

"Shaun…?" he tried to say, to ask everything with that one word, but his voice was little more than a croak. It startled him into silence. He tried to raise an arm to touch his throat, but his limbs felt as if they were being weighed down by bricks. That was when he began to panic.

"I… I thought you were going to sleep _forever_," Shaun had been saying, and then he seemed to realise that Ethan was barely managing to focus. "Dad!" Ethan heard the fear in his voice, and forced his breathing to slow, forced himself to focus on the one thing he could manage.

He didn't remember nurses coming in, giving him a drink, talking to him, although he knew it must have happened. He remembered the feel of Shaun's hand in his own, cold and sweaty and shaking.

He couldn't keep awake anymore, his awareness drifting away, but some distant part of his mind relaxed him against the inherent wrongness he'd seen. Shaun's hand anchored him, and, for a little while, he was at peace.

* * *

When he could finally keep his eyes open, Shaun was gone, but Grace was leaning against the wall, watching him. She looked exhausted, but she managed to force a smile. "Oh, Ethan…"

"Grace…" He said.

"…Where's Shaun?" He blinked again in confusion. "And Jason?"

Her face crumbled. "Ethan… how could you ask, how…" With a visible effort, she pulled herself together. "Shaun's just outside…"

"I don't understand," he muttered. "Why am I here, Grace? What's wrong with me?"

"You… you don't remember. You were in an accident, Ethan. You could have died!"

He wanted to remember, was frustrated that he couldn't do so, and then it came to him in frustrating bits and pieces and the blissful ignorance was torn away.

He didn't remember a lot. Dogged determination in sight of a red balloon, a glimpse of green… he remembered a flash of silver and some mad panic, and a crash of pain that, now that he thought about it, seemed to have bypassed him completely.

Physically, he felt fine. A little weak, maybe, but that was easily fixable. The machines, the whiteness, everything around him that shouted at "hospital" felt like a taunt.

His memory, if it could be called that, didn't make sense.

The fragments of memory slid into place a little more, and conspired to make _even less sense_.

"I… stepped in front of a car?" he asked Grace, bewildered. "That's… that's stupid, why would I…" He winced and put a hand to his head.

His wife sobbed openly now.

"Jason…" She said. It was all she seemed to be capable of saying. "Jason, he… Jason…"

The abrupt topic shift confused him. "Jason… why are we-?"

The illusive green and red were persistent behind his eyes, and he knew, somehow, that they involved his son.

He'd bought Jason a balloon, he recollected. The green… he just didn't know. He berated himself for not paying more intention, for not somehow knowing he'd have to interpret this bizarreness, his wife apparently incapable or unwilling to help.

He didn't know what he'd been doing after that. It was frantic and hazy, and he couldn't disassemble it, but he thought through it.

Red. Green. Silver.

They went to collide, and Ethan threw himself between them, because… because…

Red and green and silver split. He could feel it, surely as he could feel pain, and then there was nothing.

A jolt of awareness seemed to go through him, as if some distant part of him was afraid his wife would pull herself together and tell him before he could settle in his head.

He shot upright, not caring how dizzy it made him, or how it made the machines shriek in anger at jostling them. None of that was important, not now.

"Jason! How is he?" The car, it hadn't been going that fast, surely-

It was probably meant to come out gentle, but Grace's voice was a croak, speaking news she'd obviously never wanted to have to repeat. "He died."

"That can't be…" It was funny that practicalities came to mind now, instead of emotions. "I… I… the funeral, I have to…"

Grace was still crying. "He died six months ago, Ethan." Her voice tried to be steady, but it broke, in the end.

He stared. "…What? That, that can't be right…"

"You… you've been sleeping for six months. I thought I'd lose you too_._" She stepped forward, finally, to touch his arm, as if to verify he was real.

Ethan couldn't feel it.

He just stared, hyperaware of the dryness of his eyes, and breathed.


End file.
